The first full-length study of how motets were used and performed in the fifteenth century, this book dispels the mystery surrounding these outstanding works of vocal polyphony. It covers four areas of intense compositional activity: England, the Veneto, Bruges and Cambrai, with reference to the works of Dunstaple, Forest, Ciconia, Grenon and Du Fay. In every documented instance, motets functioned as ceremonial vehicles, whether voiced in procession through the streets of a city or the chapel of a king, at the guild chapel of a parish church or the high altar of a cathedral. The motet was an entirely vocal genre that changed radically during the period from 1400 to 1475. Robert Nosow outlines the motet's social history, demonstrating how the incorporation of different texts, musical dialects, cantus firmus materials and melodic styles represents an important key to the evolution of the genre, and its adaptability to widely variant ritual circumstances.

In the London of Shakespeare and William Byrd, Thomas East was the premier, often exclusive, printer of music. As he tells the story of this influential figure in early English music publishing, Jeremy Smith also offers a vivid overall portrait of a bustling and competitive industry, in which composers, patrons, publishers, and tradesmen sparred for creative control and financial success. It provides a truly comprehensive study of music publishing and a new way of understanding the place of musical culture in Elizabethan times. In addition, Smith has compiled the first complete chronology of East's music prints, based on both bibliographical and paper-based evidence.

This is a music theory text that presents a systematic approach to polyphonic composition in the ecclesiastical style of Palestrina. It is designed for use in beginning and intermediate level courses in modal counterpoint and helps students develop a systematic and reliable method to compare individual composers and stylistic trends of the Renaissance. It contains a comprehensive collection of Palestrina's works as well as selections from Lassus. Tear-out exercises can be used in conjunction with the text.

In this book, John Haines presents a detailed survey of songs performed in Vulgar Latin and early Romance languages from around 500 to 1200. The first part of the book discusses this enormous body of neglected songs according to the categories of lament, love song, epic and devotional song. Medieval sources - mostly condemnations - ranging from sermons to chronicles attest to the long life and popularity of this music performed all throughout this period, and predominantly by women. Performance contexts range from the burial of the dead to the nursing of infants. The study argues for the reinstatement of female vernacular song in the mainstream of medieval music historiography and ends with a discussion of the neglected medieval lullaby. The second part of the book presents an edition and informative commentary of the dozen surviving witnesses with musical notation in the early Romance period prior to 1200.

This is the final volume in the set of four collections of Michel Huglo's articles to be published in the Variorum series, and focuses on medieval music theory. The point of departure for Huglo's research was his doctoral dissertation on tonaries, published in 1971: as a consequence, he studied the manuscripts of music theory concerning plainchant, and, later, those with writings on music by authors of Late Antiquity as well as the Liber glossarum, with its many definitions of musical terms. In this volume, certain articles consider the interpretation or dissemination of texts, instruction in the art of plainchant, and musical instruction at the university. Others concern the manuscripts of St Augustine's De musica and of the writings of Calcidius, Macrobius, Helisachar, Hucbald, Gerbert of Aurillac, Abbo of Fleury, John of Afflighem, and Hieronymus de Moravia, amongst others. The volume closes with a bibliography of Michel Huglo complementing that published in 1993 and a summary list of his reviews of books on music and liturgy. Ce volume des articles de Michel Huglo termine la serie de quatre dans la collection Variorum. Il est centre sur la theorie musicale medievale. Le point de depart des recherches de Michel Huglo sur la theorie musicale du Moyen A'ge est forme par sa these sur les tonaires, editee en 1971: en consequence il etudia les manuscrits de theorie musicale concernant le plain-chant et, plus tard, les auteurs de l'Antiquite tardive et le Liber glossarum qui contient des definitions de nombreux termes musicaux. Dans ce volume, certains articles traitent de l'interpretation ou de la dissemination des textes, des instructions sur l'art du chant, et sur l'enseignement de la musique A l'Universite. Ils concernent les manuscrits du De musica d'Augustin, de Calcidius, Macrobe, Helisachar, Hucbald, Gerbert d'Aurillac, Abbon de Fleury, Jean d'Afflighem, Hieronymus de Moravia, et d'autres auteurs. Enfin, ce volume contient la bibliographie de

The printed debut of the canzone villanesca alla napolitana occurred on 24 October 1537, in Naples. Fifteen anonymous 'rustic songs' were published by Johannes de Colonia in a pocket-sized anthology with a cover featuring three women with hoes tilling the soil. The adjective villanesca (from villano or peasant) in the strict sense of the word means rustic or crude, but in this new context it also intimates that Neapolitan poet-musicians had been affected by the instinctive lyrical traditions of everyday people. The articles in this volume trace the Neapolitan origins of this song form, and its subsequent development as it spread quickly throughout Italy in a succession of editions published in Venice and Rome, providing a diverse repertory of lively songs to amuse the privileged that held and attended academies. Several studies focus on key figures in this process, notably Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, and Orlando di Lasso. At the same time the author relates these developments to the contemporary political context, notably the rivalry of Spain and France for control of the Kingdom of Naples.

Modern scholars have often portrayed the method of hexachordal solmization - the sight-singing method introduced by the 11th-century monk Guido of Arezzo - as the diatonic foundation of early music. Stefano Mengozzi challenges this view by examining a representative sample of the primary sources of solmization theory from Guido of Arezzo to Gioseffo Zarlino. These texts show that six-syllable solmization was only an option for sight-singing that never imposed its operational 'sixth-ness' onto the diatonic system, already grounded on the seven pitch letters. It was primarily through the agency of several 'classicizing' theorists of the humanist era that the six syllables came to be mistakenly conceived as a fundamental diatonic structure - a 'hexachord' built from the 'tetrachord' of the Ancient Greeks. The book will be of particular interest to readers seeking to deepen their knowledge of medieval and Renaissance musical thought with an eye to major intellectual trends of the time.

These nineteen essays by a leading scholar of Italian Renaissance music provide a corpus of significant research into Italian music and music theory of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The essays further illuminate the interaction between music theory and practice and between the humanist revival of antiquity and modern ideals of expression in the decades around 1600.

The Cambridge Songs are preserved - many of them uniquely - in a famous eleventh-century manuscript held in Cambridge University Library. Composed in Germany, mostly in Latin but with some vernacular sections, these lyrics are most notable for the variety they display in both genre and form. As one of the earliest examples of medieval secular song-writing they are a key part of the canon of European literature. This 1915 edition was the first to reproduce the complete text with facing-page transcriptions. Karl Breul, originally from Berlin, became the first university lecturer in German in 1884, and remained the most eminent Germanist at Cambridge until his death in 1932. His edition continues to be of value to medievalists today both as a source for the study of these remarkable poems and as a record of Breul's achievement in scholarship and palaeography.

In 1893, the English composer and director of the Royal College of Music C. Hubert H. Parry published Summary of the Development of Medieval and Modern European Music, an overview of European music from the middle ages to the work of Schubert and Brahms. Intended for music students, the book summarises the major composers, their work and the social circumstances that surrounded the creation of their music. This ambitious book is divided into 12 chronological chapters, from the troubadours and plainsong, through Bach and Handel to the rise of the symphony, Mozart, and the emergence of music as an expression of nationalism. In the book's first part, Parry deftly puts music in historical context, discussing England's Wars of the Roses, and the Reformation in relation to the changing styles throughout the sixteenth century; he then explores the music of the Restoration and the rise of opera.

Based on extensive documentary and archival research, Music in Renaissance Ferrara is a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave Ferrara a primary role in European music during the fifteenth century. The successive rulers of the Italian city-state, members of the Este dynasty, brought to Ferrara some of the most important composers of the period, including Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. Moreover, Ferrara has long been famous as the seat of activity of three of the most important poets of the period - Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso - as well as for its school of painting and manuscript production and illumination. With Lewis Lockwood's Music in Renaissance Ferrara, the city-state steps forward as a major musical center as well.
Winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for its original 1985 edition, this current paperback edition of Music in Renaissance Ferrara features a new preface that re-introduces the book and reflects on its contribution to our modern knowledge of music in the culture of the Italian Renaissance.

The idea that there was a time when men and women lived in perfect harmony with nature and with themselves, though rooted in classical antiquity, was one of the most fertile products of the Renaissance literary and artistic imagination. This book explores one specific aspect of this idea: the musical representation and stylization of the myth of Arcadia in sixteenth-century Italy. Giuseppe Gerbino outlines how Renaissance culture strove to keep this utopia alive and demonstrates how music played a fundamental role in the construction and preservation of this collective illusion. Covering a range of different musical genres, including the madrigal, music for theater, and early opera, the book overcomes traditional barriers among genres. Illustrative music examples, including previously unpublished music, serve to expand the reader's knowledge of this important repertory, and provide insights into the role of music in the preservation of cultural myths.

This book describes the many ways in which music was used in Italian theatrical performances between the late fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In particular, it concentrates on Polizano's Orfeo, Machiavelli's commedies, the Florentine intermedi and early operas, and the first operas in Venice.

Musical notation is a powerful system of communication between musicians, using sophisticated symbolic, primarily non-verbal means to express musical events in visual symbols. Many musicians take the system for granted, having internalized it and their strategies for reading it and translating it into sound over long years of study and practice. This book traces the development of that system by combining chronological and thematic approaches to show the historical and musical context in which these developments took place. Simultaneously, the book considers the way in which this symbolic language communicates to those literate in it, discussing how its features facilitate or hinder fluent comprehension in the real-time environment of performance. Moreover, the topic of musical as opposed to notational innovation forms another thread of the treatment, as the author investigates instances where musical developments stimulated notational attributes, or notational innovations made practicable advances in musical style.

This anthology to accompany Gateways to Understanding Music is comprised of musical "texts." These broadly defined texts-primarily musical scores-facilitate the integration of score study and music theory into the ethno/musicology curriculum, a necessary focus in the training of the professional musician. As posed by the textbook, the last question in each modular "gateway" is "Where do I go from here?" This resource provides one more opportunity to go beyond the textbook to examine music scores and texts in even greater depth. This anthology is a combination of primary sources for study: musical scores and music transcriptions, along with a few primary source documents and musical exercises.

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume twenty-three include: Guillaume de Machaut and his canonry of Reims 1338-1377; 'Notes as a garland': the chronology and narrative of Byrd's Gradualia; Reading carnival: the creation of a Florentine carnival song; Schein's occasional music and the social order in 1620s Leipzig.

This 2004 book traces the changing interpretation of troubadour and trouvere music, a repertoire of songs which have successfully maintained public interest for eight centuries, from the medieval chansonniers to contemporary rap renditions. A study of their reception therefore serves to illustrate the development of the modern concept of 'medieval music'. Important stages include sixteenth-century antiquarianism, the Enlightenment synthesis of scholarly and popular traditions and the infusion of archaeology and philology in the nineteenth century, leading to more recent theories on medieval rhythm. More often than now, writers and performers have negotiated a compromise between historical research and a more imaginative approach to envisioning the music of troubadours and trouveres. This book points not so much to a resurrection of medieval music in modern times as to a continuous tradition of interpreting these songs over eight centuries.

Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer Galileo, was a guiding light of the Florentine Camerata. His Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, published in 1581 or 1582 and now translated into English for the first time, was among the most influential music treatises of his era. Galilei is best known for his rejection of modern polyphonic music in favor of Greek monophonic song. The treatise sheds new light on his importance, both as a musician who advocated a new philosophy of music history and theory based on an objective search for the truth, and as an experimental scientist who was one of the founders of modern acoustics.

This collection addresses questions of gender and sexuality as they relate to music from the middle ages to the early seventeenth century. These essays present a body of scholarship that considers music as part of the history of sexuality, stimulating conversation within musicology as well as bringing music studies into dialogue with feminist, gender and queer theory.

In Europe the tradition of secular dance has continued unbroken until the present. In the late Middle Ages it was an important and frequent event for the nobility a gracious way to entertain guests, for the peasantry a welcome relaxation from the toils of the day. Now back in print, this collection presents compositions that are known or suspected to be instrumental dances from before ca. 1420. The forty-seven pieces vary in length and style and come from French, Italian, English, and Czech sources. Timothy McGee relates medieval dances to the descriptions found in literary, theoretical, and archival sources and to the depictions in the iconography of the Middle Ages. In a section on instrumental performance practices, he provides information about ornamenting the dances and improvising in a historically appropriate style. This comprehensive edition brings together in one volume a repertory that has been scattered over many years and countries."

This comprehensive collection of essays offers an overview of scholarly and analytical approaches toward the motet in its most varied incarnations from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. Featuring essays from the top scholars in the field, including Paula Higgins, Craig Monson, Patrick Macey, Anne Walters Robertson, Jessie Ann Owens, Margaret Bent, and Joshua Rifkin, this collection offers, through insightful reading of specific motets and motet repertoires, a broad-ranging analysis of the function and context of the motet in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Composers at Work is the first comprehensive and systematic study of compositional process in Renaissance music. Owens draws on documentary, manuscript, and theoretical evidence to construct a striking new explanation of how composers actually worked. Through a study of autograph sketches, drafts, and fair copies of composers such as Henricus Isaac, Cipriano de Rore, Francesco Corteccia, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Owens reveals a process of working in separate parts, line by line, and not in full score, as in our modern editions. This discovery has major implications for the analysis, editorial interpretation, and performance of early music.

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume sixteen include: The dialectic between Occitania and France in the thirteenth century; Du Fay the poet? Problems in the texts of his motets; A mirror of monarchy: Music and musicians in the household chapel of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

This book provides an in-depth study of the late medieval chanson, from Gace Brule through Guillaume Du Fay. It is largely concerned with interpretation of the way accidentals function, not only at the level of local detail but also as part of the overall design. Thomas Brothers thus explores the way inflections are used by the composer as an expressive tool. The background problem to which this study responds is the conceptual difficulty we have in interpreting pitch syntax in this repertory. Support for this approach comes from reference to causa pulchritudinis ('by reason of beauty'), a justification for chromatic writing first encountered at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In advancing an interpretation of the musical side of the chanson, Thomas Brothers aims to bring standards closer to what has been achieved in study of sister disciplines of art and literature.

A redefinition of the animal's relationship to sound and language in French texts from medieval England. The barks, hoots and howls of animals and birds pierce through the experience of medieval texts. In captivating episodes of communication between species, a mandrake shrieks when uprooted from the ground, a saint preaches to the animals, and a cuckoo causes turmoil at the parliament of birds with his familiar call. This book considers a range of such episodes in Old French verse texts, including bestiaries, treatises on language, the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Fables by Marie de France, aiming to reconceptualize and reinterpret animal soundscapes. It argues that they draw on sound to produce competing perspectives, forms of life, and linguistic subjectivities, suggesting that humans owe more to animal sounds than we are disposed to believe. Texts inviting readers to listen and learn animal noises, to seek spiritual consolation in the jargon of birds, or to identify with the speaking wolf, create the conditions for an assertion of human exceptionalism even as they simultaneously invite readers to question such forms of control. By asking what it means for an animal to cry, make noise, or speak in French, this book provides an important resource for theorizing sound and animality in multilingual medieval contexts, and for understanding the animal's role in the interpretation of the natural world.